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00:00Keep moving! Where the hell is it?
00:07Just for it!
00:10Welcome to MojoPlays, and today we're taking a look at the 10 reasons why gaming peaked in the 2000s and
00:17has not been the same since.
00:24This one goes to the rival crew.
00:27Before you begin, we publish new videos all week long, so be sure to subscribe to MojoPlays and ring the
00:32bell to be notified about our latest videos.
00:35The Pressure for Polish
00:45These days, developers can release patches across gaming platforms to fix issues for their games.
00:51It's become so convenient that both developers and players have grown somewhat comfortable with newly released games launching in somewhat
00:58rough states.
00:59This routine was not always the case.
01:07Before the 8th generation of consoles made this a luxury, game companies were at greater risk when launching busted games.
01:14If you printed millions of copies of a game in a buggy, broken state, your sales were going to suffer
01:21almost immediately and you would have to quickly reprint things.
01:25That is still the case today, but some big game companies have gotten too comfy in releasing games ASAP and
01:32fixing bugs after point of sale.
01:34Corvus gave me this job. Can't they help us out?
01:37When was the last time government agency got anything done fast?
01:41Point taken.
01:42Fair pricing
01:49Speaking of sales, the price of video games used to feel much more fair back in the 2000s than it
01:54does today.
01:55We aren't saying this just because games cost $50 at that time.
01:59Part of the reason games cost that much was most likely because of the economic troubles that many countries were
02:04facing at the time.
02:05Still, there were plenty of ways to enjoy gaming without breaking the bank.
02:19If you were a handheld gamer, you could snatch up a new Game Boy Advance or Nintendo DS game for
02:25$20 to $30 on average.
02:27On consoles, certain prints of games may be available at a cheaper price because they sold so many copies.
02:32Remember, the greatest hits in the player's choice labels.
02:36To this day, you can get plenty of games for dirt cheap during a sale on Steam, PlayStation Store, or
02:41Nintendo eShop.
02:43But without an enticing discount on physical games, AAA companies are charging $70 or close to $100 for their newest
02:51releases.
02:52And you don't even get instruction manuals anymore. What the hell's up with that?
03:02The Graphical Arms Race
03:11Many of us who grew up in 2005 and 2006 will recall the first time seeing a Wii, a PlayStation
03:173, or an Xbox 360.
03:19If you were already playing on the GameCube, PS2, or original Xbox, the seventh generation looked like a massive leap
03:27forward.
03:27Unfortunately, this was where gaming went downhill drastically.
03:38With more power available to them, many AAA game companies began a massive push for making all of their games
03:45look as realistic and detailed as possible.
03:48What many of them didn't account for was how awful their games would wind up running.
03:53Before this big push, there were plenty of big budget games on older consoles that looked just fine and ran
03:59at a buttery smooth 60 frames per second.
04:03After the big push, suddenly 15 to 30 frames became the new norm somehow.
04:09And nobody complained.
04:11Everyone lives happily ever after.
04:12It's a little more complicated than that.
04:14Bah!
04:15Details.
04:15Less power, more death.
04:25Like we said, we were getting games running fine before the big graphical arms race during the seventh generation of
04:31consoles.
04:31There wasn't much power to extract from the GameCube, PS2, and original Xbox compared to the consoles that came after.
04:38But because of this lack of power, there was more reason to invest in a proper art direction as you
04:44could make polygonal models work in tandem with different art styles.
04:56Developers had to get creative with how their game looked and played while making sure it also ran well and
05:02still looked great.
05:03Nowadays, a lot of developers get too comfortable selling games on visuals alone.
05:08All because we want players to be a part of our world and live in our world.
05:14By the way, we're making another open world game with some lazy RPG mechanics.
05:18But our world is so great.
05:20It's so immersive.
05:22Actually, it isn't.
05:23Yeah, it is.
05:24I'm thinking we should just agree to disagree on this one.
05:27Physical releases everywhere.
05:40It's almost hard to believe, but there was a time where you could go to the store and purchase almost
05:44whatever game you wanted.
05:46There was no digital storefront you could buy and download games from, excluding Steam, but it was still in its
05:51infancy at the time.
05:52And if you wanted a GameCube, PS2, Xbox, GVA, DS, or PSP game, you'd have to go into a store
05:59and see what was on the shelf.
06:06Of course, not every single game may have been in stock during one visit or another, but the fact that
06:12you could buy a copy of a game, get an instruction manual with it, and be able to trade games
06:17with friends was a fun experience.
06:18Since the move to digital downloads, it just feels like the hobby has become much more sterile and bland.
06:24And you can't really do much game sharing, either.
06:27Unless you're on Steam.
06:35A more niche medium.
06:43While we're on the subject of experiencing games with others,
06:46we truly missed the days when the video game scene was just a little quieter.
06:51Gaming websites were around, but gaming magazines were the way to catch up on gaming news, read interviews, and see
06:58what was coming out and everything.
07:00You could even write into these magazines and maybe get featured in the next issue with a response from the
07:05editor.
07:11This corner of gaming made it feel like this was a special hobby filled with passionate individuals who loved the
07:17medium as much as we did.
07:19Fast forward to today, and everybody's posting their thoughts every single second of the day, blowing every little thing out
07:26of proportion,
07:26screaming and pushing games to fail, obsessing over how women look in video games.
07:32Really, the noise has become a total embarrassment, man.
07:43The push to online.
07:54Earlier we had mentioned how the AAA game companies made a huge push for realistic graphics at the expense of
08:00everything else after 2005.
08:01That wasn't the only kind of aggression we saw from them though.
08:05Once Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare exploded, online gaming suddenly became the only thing that mattered to most of
08:12these companies.
08:13Every single game needed an online multiplayer mode, or just be online multiplayer at all.
08:18Even the ones that were primarily single player, and offline.
08:29On the plus side, we saw quite a number of experimental game modes with unique mechanics and controls.
08:35On the downside, did everything really have to be a shooter?
08:39At the time, many of these titles kind of wound up blending together.
08:48Aggressive competition.
08:59Unfortunately, a lot of modern gaming sees the big AAA companies chasing after the same exact pie, or types of
09:07pie, over and over again.
09:09You know, the online live service money printers they keep fantasizing about, and failing to recognize the downward spiral those
09:16kinds of games are on.
09:18Back in the day, these game companies were gunning for every kind of corner of the market.
09:30It seemed like each company had their own fighting game, their own racing game, their own platformer mascot, their own
09:36shooter, and some weird titles here and there that have become cult classics.
09:40Today, it just seems like everybody is too busy searching for their imaginary fountain of youth.
09:45You know, the game that never dies, and always updates, and is never boring.
09:50Cause that's a game that totally exists.
10:00Room for experimentation.
10:15Companies these days are so obnoxiously risk-averse that the industry has been in desperate need for something truly revolutionary
10:21and innovative for a long time now.
10:23The 2000s were probably the last era of gaming where companies were somewhat open to experimental titles.
10:30We saw tons of unique ideas coming out of Capcom, Namco, and even Sony's own Japan studio around this time,
10:37with titles like Okami, Katamari Damashi, and Patapon.
10:47But today, all anybody can think about is, how can we burn the most amount of money that can potentially
10:52quadruple itself?
10:54Capcom and Bandai Namco have warmed up to the idea of churning out smaller games, as has Sega, but Sony,
11:00on the other hand, everything has to be hundreds of millions of dollars worth, it seems.
11:11And lastly, when games were games.
11:24This notion pretty much touches upon some recurring points we've made throughout the video.
11:29Much of the video gaming industry has been enveloped by the sole drive of money, money, and all of the
11:35money only.
11:36Not just some, all of the money.
11:39A lot of these companies don't understand what makes video games fun, or what kinds of games can be fun.
11:45It's become an industry so heavily driven by what's trending, and what could be trending soon, and only green-lighting
11:51games that are considered safe.
11:54Sounds pretty big for an accident.
11:56There are no accidents.
11:58What a lot of them fail to realize is that in the world of entertainment, nothing is safe.
12:04Nothing is ever truly safe.
12:08Everything is a risk, and if none of the companies took the risks they took in the 2000s, they wouldn't
12:13be where they are today.
12:14Sega, Capcom, and Bandai Namco, to their credit, have kind of kept that energy up with balancing big hitters with
12:21smaller projects.
12:23As for the rest of the AAA gaming industry, what happened to y'all's imagination, man?
12:28Where's the creativity gone?
12:34What aspect of 2000s gaming do you miss the most?
12:37Let us know down in the comments, and don't forget to subscribe to MojoPlays.
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